Simple newsletter cleanup with Google Apps Script

I have recently started to switch more and more of my content consumption to email. Instead of using any social network, like Reddit or Twitter, I subscribe to newsletters directly. This has worked great so far. Every day, I get the hot news from news outlets like BBC, and every few days I get more creative or long form content like XKCD scripts, delivered directly to my inbox.

However, I am not always interested in cosuming the content, and I also don’t really want to spend time cleaning up my email when I read something. Luckily, I am using G Suite for my email, so there is a very simple solution for this. I can set up a Google Apps Script that will keep my Inbox clean for me.

Go to script.google.com and create a new project. This should open the script editor. Put the following code in the editor:

function cleanUpOldNews() {
  var cutoffDate = new Date(Date.now() - 3 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
  Logger.log(cutoffDate);

  var query = 'in:inbox category:forums before:' + cutoffDate.getFullYear() + "/" + (cutoffDate.getMonth() + 1) + "/" + cutoffDate.getDate() ;
  Logger.log(query);

  var threads = GmailApp.search(query);
  for (var i = 0; i < threads.length; i++) {
    var thread = threads[i];
    thread.moveToArchive();
  }
}

Save this and go to the project overview. Create a daily 6AM trigger that calls cleanUpOldNews().

Now all you have to do when you recieve any newsletter is to drag and drop it into the Forums category in Gmail. After about 2-3, ML will catch up and start categorizing it automatically.